Tales of The Rays celebrates its fourth anniversary with a slew of new events!

Tales of Link's 7th Anniversary too!

That's right, it's officially been four years since Tales of The Rays launched in Japan. Naturally, they're doing a lot to celebrate, and giving out a lot of free stuff as expected. Check it all out here!
Firstly some apologies are in order. Due to the large amount of things to happen in Rays in a short time, we had to combine it all into one article, and then as it was getting bloated, split it up into two again. This first article will cover currently ongoing events as well as act as short guidelines for each. There was also an anniversary stream detailing upcoming info, which will be its own article that will go up later.

Let's start with the main course: the anniversary raid! Two years ago we had an anniversary raid where we face off against Dhaos and recruit him. That event also gave new decisive Mirrages for heroines designed by Kosuke Fujishima: Mint, Colette and Tear. This time we're getting 4 decisive Mirrages for 4 heroines designed by Mutsume Inomata: RuteeRealaKohaku and Illia! The boss this time is the EX boss of Tales of Destiny 2: Magnadeus. In the producer's letter last month, they cheekily said he's not playable as he'd mystic Arte the developers if they tried controlling him. Indeed he's far more powerful than any playable boss. In addition to decisive Mirrage Artes, all four heroines will get new Master Artes as well!

Next up is a new Tales of Link Event to celebrate the anniversary of that game, which was in March! Tales of Link may be offline for good, but it's really nice that Tales of The Rays is keeping the spirit of Link alive. There's no new characters here, but there are new Artes for AllenSaraZephyr and Kana. This time all four are getting Crossover Mirrage Artes! Of course, since a Crossover Mirrage Arte is only for two people, that means there's only two new Mirrage Artes: One for Allen and Sara and another for the pairing of Zephyr and Kana. The latter two are also getting new Reverse Master Artes! This event has 13 stages and one challenge stage where you can only use Tales of Link characters, but no farming is necessary: once you've completed all the quests once you're done with the event. It's worth it for the rewards, then you can go back to one of the other events to focus on.

Next we have rerun news. There's not one but two reruns currently happening! The first rerun is the Yuan & Martel Wedding Event. You can read more about the event from our article when it first ran here. Of course, as a rerun you do not need to farm the stage: after clearing all the quests once you need only spend AP on other quests, do just inputs, perform Mirrage Artes and send characters on orders from the home screen to get the currency you need for the event shop. You can recruit Yuan and Martel here if you missed them as well!

There's also a very special rerun going on: the God Eater Resonant Ops collaboration! This one was given out of the blue, but it comes with panel missions and unlike usual reruns must be farmed for a bit. Thankfully, you don't need to farm much: You only need 500,000 raid points to get all rewards from the raid. It's the perfect opportunity to recruit all three God Eater characters and obtain their Mirrages and 5 stars, especially since there's a God Eater step up banner. After clearing all the quests once to unlock Alisa, Claire and Philine, you can farm the last quest to get both event shop currency and Raid points. Bonus characters besides the God Eater characters are Luke, Eizen and Elize, so the team you make can be pretty flexible. While the fights may seem intimidating, Elize is a competent healer and you can save all your Mirrage Artes for the last battle to maximize your point gain easily. You can also get some event shop currency by doing other quests as well! As a side note, we strongly suggest getting Luke's collaboration Master Arte from this event, as it makes him into a very useful character.

Finally for events, there's two special bonus events. The first is the return of the Casino quest. This isn't a rerun of the Casino event itself, just a quest that can give you a large amount of Gald. We recommend clearing it once for the dia. The other bonus event is a new set of series challenge quests! This time the series represented are Phantasia, Destiny, Eternia and Destiny 2. You can only use a team of characters from the corresponding Tales title for each quest, testing your skill with a variety of characters. Thankfully your helper isn't limited, so you can't go wrong with a Mithos or Barbatos helper to make things easier. There will also be a new set of series challenge quests later on as well. Completing these quests not only get you dia, but also tickets that can be exchanged for series gacha tickets!

The last thing to report on is the introduction of new character Baldr, a Rays original character designed by Kosuke Fujishima. He was introduced in the story so you need only play through the latest chapter, Tales of The Rays Last Cradle Chapter 5: The Loyal Swordsman, to recruit him. He fights using two elemental swords as well as kicks and body strikes. He's a bit of a flirt as well... his chapter introduction also came with Overray Mirrage Artes for fellow Rays original characters Mercuria and Nazar, and rolling any of the new Mirrage Artes on their banner will get you costumes of all 3 of them in their PJs! Mercuria's still a child after all, so having a Pajama Party is one of the things she's always wanted to do.

Now, here's a schedule of times to keep in mind for each event, and as usual, Mirrage Arte and costume previews will be at the bottom of this article!

Tales of The Rays 4th Anniversary Events Start Time End Time
Magnadeus Raid/Event Quests February 28, 14:00 JST March 11, 10:59 JST
Tales of Link 7th Anniversary Event March 3rd, 14:00 JST March 16, 11:59 JST
God Eater Resonant Ops Collab Rerun February 25th, 14:00 JST March 9, 10:59 JST
Yuan & Martel Wedding Event February 25th, 14:00 JST March 10, 10:59 JST
Series Challenge Quests February 28, 14:00 JST March 5, 23:59 JST
Casino Quest February 28, 14:00 JST March 9, 23:59 JST
Tales of The Rays Arc 4 Chapter 5: The Loyal Swordsman February 22, 14:00 JST No End (Limited Missions End One Month After Chapter Introduction)

Now let's talk a little bit more about the Magnadeus Raid. Those of us who've fought him or seen others fight him in Tales of Destiny 2 would know he's one of the most difficult fights in the series, and for good reason. In that game he started the fight with a Mystic Arte and the only way to avoid it was to quickly interrupt him if you started the battle close enough to him. It's the same idea here, although this time he technically starts off spellcasting, the spell still hits the entire field and deal massive damage. You absolutely must interrupt him as soon as the battle starts, and every other time he starts casting a spell as well. He also takes a cue from Barbatos and will automatically perform a Mirrage Arte on you if you dare to perform certain actions, depending on difficulty. Here's a handy chart to make sure!

Difficulty What Triggers Magnadeus' Mirrage Arte
Normal  Attack Artes that heal the user some HP when they hit an enemy. This effect comes with enhancements and are not an inherent trait, so you can turn this effect off if you really want to use the Arte for the attacks.
Hard Artes that reduce extra Iron Stance when they hit the enemy. Like above, this is an enhancement that can be turned off if you  want to be able to use the Arte.
Mania Recovery Artes. Disable all healing. Thankfully, you may use damaging Artes that heal you, which is only disallowed on Normal Mode.
Unknown Master Artes, including Reverse Masters. Note that you can still use the Base versions of 5*s, just not the Master Arte versions. For regular Master Artes just avoid using the 5* when you chain enough moves, and for Reverse Master Artes, avoid using it without comboing into it first.
Evil Artes that allow you to pass through enemies to end up behind them. Examples include Rising Falcon, Ix' Shredding Talons, Asbel's Gale Maw or Yuri's Ghost Wolf.
Chaos Artes that grant you invincibility frames, such as Rising Falcon, Ix' Shredding Talons, Asbel's Gale Maw, Farah's Eagle Dive, etc. As of this writing, this difficulty is not unlocked, so we're unsure if this includes Master Artes.

Note that there's only one restriction per difficulty. so pick the highest difficulty you can consistently beat. Thankfully, he doesn't have too high HP compared to other Raid Bosses, so a good Mirrage Arte helper and some skill with combos is all you need. In fact, the best way to beat him is to set every character's AI and Artes to be aggressive as possible, use a helper Mirrage Arte as soon as the battle begins so you don't have to spend time breaking Iron Stance to interrupt his first spell, then combo afterwards without breaking a restriction as long as possible. Here's an example video from another Abyssal Chronicles reader showing how well this strategy works.

To ensure a good time bonus, you'll want to end your assault with another Mirrage Arte that you hopefully charge mid-combo, but as this video shows it shouldn't be too hard with 4 party members attacking to keep the combo going until the fight's won. Despite his size, he's fairly lightweight and Artes can keep him staggered for a while, so this is not a bad strategy at all. For suggestions on what helpers to bring, KohakuReala and Rutee's Decisive Mirrage Artes are all fairly simple to combo afterwards with, though you'll want to input your next Arte as soon as the animation ends.

This time we have no recommendations for how many points you should score, as there's no special reward at the end nor is there any event exclusive items like Mirrage Shards besides for Ix and Mileena. That said there are tickets to exchange for Mirrage Shards and 6th enhancement orbs that are very hard to come by, so it's best to set your own goal and go for it. If you can farm Magnadeus well enough, 500,000 points is all you need for the last 6th enhancement orb.

That's it for this raid. Before we move on to the Costume and Arte previews (of which there are many this time), let's talk about Gacha banners. For the anniversary, there's 1 Free Guranteed Mirrage Arte Daily. It'll present itself as a step up banner that costs nothing to roll on, so make sure you check it out as you log in each day! There's also a Dia Step up for the God Eater rerun as well as an Overray Step Up that also takes dia for the first few steps. You should get at least one Mirrage Arte out of these step ups, God Eater is only available for a limited time and Overrays are powerful and rare, so I suggest taking advantage of them!

Gacha Banner End Time
Daily Free Mirrage Arte Resets Daily For Anniversary Period
Magnadeus Raid Decisive Mirrage Arte Step Up/Regular Banners March 11, 10:59 JST
Tales of Link Beat Links Step Up/Regular Banners March 16, 11:59 JST
God Eater Rerun Step Up/Regular Banners March 9, 10:59 JST
Overray Step Up March 10, 23:59 JST
Baldr Story Banner March 11, 10:59 JST
Yuan and Martel Wedding Rerun Banner March 10, 10:59 JST
All Out Tower March 2021 Banner March 21, 11:59 JST

And that's it for events! As a reminder, there was also an anniversary stream detailing upcoming news for Rays. That will be its own separate article coming soon! Now it's time for a lot of Arte and costume previews.

Inomata Heroine Costumes


The featured heroines for the raid are wearing costumes perfect for a fancy party to celebrate the 4th anniversary! They also wear these costumes in the event story itself.

Tales of Link Crossover Mirrage Previews


Link characters didn't win a festival poll to get these crossover Mirrage Artes, they just got them as a special part of the Link anniversary celebration. You can check the Artes themselves out with the rest of the Mirrage Arte previews below!

Baldr, Mercuria and Nazar Pajama costumes


As was said before, Mercuria always wanted to have a pajama party, so these costumes reflect that. Acting out her childish desires and having fun is a start contrast to the antagonistic role she was built up to have in the previous arc!

Kohaku

Illia

Reala

Rutee

Allen & Sara

Zephyr & Kana

Baldr

Nazar

Since Nazar's Overray is something of an anniversary celebration too, his Overray is his own super special take on one of the most iconic Tales Artes: Demon Fang! Also known in Japanese as Majinken. It may seem silly for a big special attack, but he can't use the Arte in normal battles. The added effect his overray gives is extra stagger time and the ability to make any attack force a knocked down enemy stand up again!

Mercuria

Just like Nazar above, Mercuria has her take on the other iconic Tales Arte: Indignation! She event starts off with the incantation. She makes it her own, and it looks really cool with the added environment. The added effect her Overray has is giving her passive Iron Stance, increasing enemy stagger time and making all allies able to automatically block attacks from her targeted enemy.

That's it for event news, but not it for this anniversary. We're going through information from the anniversary preview for another article later, so stick around for that!

Tales of the Rays
Tales of BerseriaTales of the Rays is a Tales mobile game for the iOS and Android featuring characters designed by Hidenori Matsuraba and a new ADF-LMBS (Advanced Flick Linear Motion Battle System). The game tells the story of hero Ix Nieves and heroine Mileena Weiss in the world of Tir Na Nog. Characters from the previous Tales titles appear in this game. The game initially had an English version, but was short-lived and now currently runs exclusively in Japan.

Info Page | News | Gallery | Official Website (JP)

Khayyaam
About Khayyaam 104 Articles
When he’s not playing Tales, Khayyaam tries his best to get as many people he knows as possible into the series. He’s also a fan of all sorts of games in general, especially Fighting Games, Action Games and RPGs, and he loves to write and talk about them too, especially from a gameplay and game design perspective. One day he’ll make his own game, or be a voice actor in a game, but for now he’s happy just playing games and talking about them.